The Bob

January 10, 2012

Bob Kerrey is currently on vacation from his home in New York City’s Greenwich Village to see if he should change his residency and voting status from New York to Nebraska so that he can then run for Senate in Nebraska.

Let all that sink in for a minute.

Carpetbagger? What carpetbagger? says Kerrey, who just a few years ago was looking at running for Mayor of New York City.

Oh but look at all the property taxes I have paid in Nebraska!, says Kerrey — petulantly waving his hand at the GOP candidates who dare question the guy who has lived on the East Coast for the past twelve years. (Well, the next thing you know, Kerrey may just have to endorse a Ted Turner Senate candidacy. Wait, no one say anything to Turner…)

You see, Cosmic Bob Kerrey, used to live in Nebraska kids. We say, “kids”, because many of our readers were likely still watching Barney & Friends in days when Kerrey roamed the Senate corridors. To them, “Bob Kerrey” is just the name of that bridge you walk out to the middle of in order to halk a loog into the muddy Mo.

Ya see yungins, Kerrey’s last full year in the Senate was the year 2000. Ah, the turn of the millenium. Back when M. Night Shyamalan came out with “The Sixth Sense” and whose name didn’t incite laughter and derision. “Sports Night” was an edgy ESPN mocking dramedy. And a young Ricky Martin had us all “Livin’ la Vida Loca”.

Just like yesterday, yeah?

No?

Well, as will be coming out…and out and out… Kerrey ain’t the same dashing young politico who wooed Debra Winger at the Springsteen concert at the Devaney Center.

See now, Kerrey is an unrepetant suporter of ObamaCare. Oh, he says he wants to “fix” the bad parts. But Kerrey is MUCH more likely to support a full-on single-payer government takeover of health care than Ben Nelson every was — and look where HE put us.

And then as the NEGOP notes today, Kerrey is a full supporter of the miserable “cap and trade” plan that even he admits would have, or will, cost more jobs than it could ever save or create.

And if you, Nebraskan, do not believe in Kerrey’s version of the global warming “crisis”? Yeah, you are JUST LIKE those Southerners (and others) who did not believe Jim Crow laws should be changed.

So to sum up, from Cosmic Bob: ObamaCare = Thumbs Up, and Global Warming Doubter = Racist.
And you don’t think New York changed Kerrey?

Well, he certainly does:

“From my standpoint, it isn’t just because I live in Greenwich Village now – the longer I live here, the further to the left I get on health care.”

***

And please, save us from this nostalgia, or whatever it is, of, “but what of the Nebraska Democrats??? We need balance!”

We are looking YOUR way, OWH’s Michael Kelly.

Kelly today lamented the demise of the elected or electable Nebraska Democrat (clearly ignoring the Omaha City Council and the Mayor’s Offices of Omaha and Lincoln).

You know, try as we might, we do not remember the local press lamenting the demise of the Nebraska GOP back when Kerrey and Exon and Nelson and Hoagland were struttin’ their election victories across the front page of the OWH.

And let’s face it: Kerrey version 2.0 won’t be voting like Kerrey 1.0 or even 1.5. He thinks America NEEDS more of the likes of Senator Harry freakin’ Reid.

So that’s awesome.

And Democrat Dick Fellman, who Kelly interviews? He thinks we need more dynamic personalities from the Democrats. Yup that’s what we need. More great speakers who promise Hope & Change. Because that really gets America where it needs to be.

And if Fellman really thinks Nebraska voters yearn for the dynamic, take a quick listen to Nebraska’s current top elected officials. We aren’t knocking them or anything, but they aren’t exactly delivering Cross of Gold speeches across the state.

And that’s just fine. Keep your speeches to yourselves, vote the right way to get government off our backs, help make it easier for business to grow and jobs to flourish. And we’ll all be good.

***

We learned that “Occupy Omaha” (yeah, apparently they’re still around) is having an “Open House” to bitch about one thing or another.

And that will be at … well, not at THEIR house, that’s for sure. Unless they mean an “OpenTent” or maybe an “OpenLeanTo” (bring your own pee bucket!).

They will also be hosting a “grievance camera”. Must be part of the 12 Days of Festivus…

Be glad it’s just a “grievance camera” and a rally confined to one day. You could be lucky like those of us who live in the Star City and have had the gateway to the State Capitol clogged with tents and handmade signs since October 15th. Occupy Lincoln is putting Occupy Omaha to shame and for once, the Big O is not #1. Watch for movement come summer when the City of Lincoln is chomping to re-hab Centennial Mall and they will have to create another “public space” out of thin air somewhere downtown to accomodate the demanding OL’ers. In the meantime, OL is running to Open Mic sessions at the City Council demanding that they pass a resolution against corporate personhood. Yep, Lincoln has all the fun.

I think the Carpetbagger rap will have as much effect on Bob Kerrey’s potential candicacy as it did for Chuck Hagel who hadn’t lived here for 30 years and moved back to run for the Senate and when finished with the Senate was never seen here again. Or Hal Daub who was a Virginian for everything but his voting location and moved back to run for Mayor of Omaha. The same people who were old enough to vote in those elections who are complaining about the luggage most likely voted for both of those two gentlemen without any hesitation when the issue was raised in those elections.

Chuck Hagel spent most of his adult life in Washington D.C. before he came back to Nebraska around two years before he ran for the Senate. What that means is that Hagel was a carpet bagger and that Kerrey has spent a higher percentage of his adult in Nebraska than Hagel did. Any Republican who voted for Hagel has no right to criticize Kerrey for being a carpet bagger.

By the way, Occupy Lincoln are hosting some kind of awful ‘educational series’, taught by one of my lefty colleagues from UNL Economics. Markets are bad, banks are evil, central planning is good, yadda yadda.

Interesting snippet from an old New York Times blog piece.
After several friends had e-mailed him a link to an Internet quiz that uses a checklist of issues to determine which candidate a participant matches up best with, Mr. Kerrey said, he “broke down and tried it.”

RWP, your “lefty colleague from UNL” seems qualified to do what he is doing. You should run down to Lincoln and teach those Occupiers some chemistry. Global warming is good, oil is great, sunlight and wind suck, yadda yadda.

Kerrey is coming back to Neb at the behest of the DSCC to try to pound the chest of the Neb Democratic party to see if he help can get the its heart started. He’s not here to volunteer to be the corpse.

Most of our economics professors are qualified to teach economics, a field with sadly little predictive ability when it comes to markets or their behavior. If any of them actually understood markets, they’d be on Wall Street.

Excellent post, Sweeper, from top to bottom. Kerrey’s big, big, big liability is not that he hasn’t lived here in over a decade, it’s that he thinks Obamacare is frickin’ awesome! He may want to delve a little deeper into why the Benator is quitting: supporting Obamacare. He might want to know that Nelson got booed at a pizza place shortly after voting for Obamacare. Nelson could give him the $3 million, it still won’t be enough because at the end of the day, Senator Kerrey would vote for Senator Reid for Majority Leader and would vote to block any repeal of Obamacare. I can’t see how people are going to start loving Obamacare between now and November.

So, I see y’all spent another day speculating about your U.S. Senate candidates.
Did you notice the N.H. primary last night? Finally, Ron Paul is a force to be reckoned with!
Now the media and Republican pols MUST consider the Libertarian position. Without Ron Paul, Romney can’t beat Obama!!!

Julie: It’s good to see you’ve got your blinders off! There was a time when you ONLY considered abortion. Then you took up stem cell research. NOW, you’ve begun to concern yourself with civil liberties (i.e. occupying public spaces). Some day, you may even get to a place where you will consider quality of life, -of the already born.

Currently at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee–news of Bob Kerrey’s potential candidacy has been met with guffaws from longtime RNC members, even reminding some of Walter Mondale’s ill-fated bid for Senate in 2002. That resulted in a Republican pickup, and Kerrey’s candidacy will as well.

Dennis, please, ixnay with trying to compare Carpet bagger Hagel and Carpet bagger Kerrey. No one, and I mean NO ONE made a big deal about Hagel at the time. He was a relative unknown when he first ran and the fact was he’d been working in Omaha for years before he declared his candidacy. Kerrey, on the other hand, has been notoriously living in New York for more than a decade now. Don’t try to say that the two situations are remotely similar.

Dennis, I’ll go a step further. I’m growing weary of your nonsense on this blog. Don’t try to tell us what Republicans can or cannot do. The reason Republicans would attack Kerrey for being a carpet bagger is because he’s made it such an easy Target by running off to NYC for a dozen years before opportunistically considering a run for Senate from a state he left years ago. If you don’t think carpet bagging claims are fair game against Kerrey, then you should be lecturing your fellow Democrats about attacking a Congressman for carpet bagging who has lived here for YEARS before he ran for Congress.

It simply amazes me that Repubs attach the carpetbagger label to someone who grew up and lived most of his life in Nebraska while giving a pass to someone who never lived in this state until moving here for the sole purpose of running for office. This falls under the IOKIYAR category.

I guess RWP thinks we should weaken the EPA and have Bhopal disasters here instead of India. And your take on the U.S. chemical industry is pure BS. Simply google Chemical industry in the US and you’ll find quotes such as “In the U.S. there are 170 major chemical companies. They operate internationally with more than 2,800 facilities outside the U.S. and 1,700 foreign subsidiaries or affiliates operating. The U.S. chemical output is $750 billion a year. The U.S. industry records large trade surpluses and employs more than a million people in the United States alone.” Anecdotal “evidence” proves nothing and a Chemistry professor should know that.

Anonymous at post 31, you’re joking, right? Sole purpose? You have no clue. A quick Google search showed that Fortenberry was employed by a publishing company in Lincoln at least as far back as 1995. He didn’t get elected to Congress until 2004 when he ran for Bereuter’s open seat. So, is he permanently disqualified from ever representing Nebraska because he grew up somewhere else? And, let’s be honest. Had Nelson decided to run, Bob Kerrey would not remotely be contemplating establishing a Nebraska residence. The ONLY reason he’s contemplating such a move is to go to Washington. At least Fortenberry has a house here and his family lives here.

I think the Nebraska Democrat party having to go back and recruit Bob Kerrey shows how in shambles their party really is. Did Ben do any work to create a viable candidate to run for anything in this state? What have they been doing for the last 10 years to expand their base? Is their a party in any state in as piss poor of shape as this one?

The only bright side for Dems in this state is that their party couldn’t possibly be any lower or disfunctional than it is now. Its all up from here!

Chairman Mark:
Mondale only “ran” because Senator Wellstone was killed in a plane crash 11 days before the election. It’s more accurately described as Mondale replaced Wellstone on the ballot. Coleman beat Mondale and then lost in the next election. I hardly think Kerrey announcing potentially 8 months before the election is a similar story. Besides a Kerrey pickup of Nelson’s seat would frankly be a Dem pickup in the Senate since Nelson rarely seems to vote with the Dems anyway. A run by Kerrey is without a doubt the scariest scenario to the Nebraska republicans.

Anonymostly, you should do your research before spouting off and throwing insults. Fortenberry was elected to the Lincoln City Council in 1997, so maybe he was in Lincoln for one year before his campaigning started.

No GK, RWP stated that chemical companies should move to India to escape EPA regulations. Bhopal is what happens when industry is not regulated. RWP would prefer less regulation here increasing the chance of a Bhopal here.

A’mous at post #39: He’s been here since at least 1995 if not earlier. He owns a house here in Lincoln WHERE HIS FAMILY LIVES! His kids go to school here! One of his kids attends the same HS where Ivy Marie Harper gradgitated. When it comes to Jeff Fortenberry, the whole “carpetbagger” thing is a stale, stale argument. You should have raised it in ’97. The proverbial “statute of limitations” has run on that gripe. Get over it.

As for Rockin’ Bob Kerrey on the other hand, he doesn’t live here. Hasn’t lived here in years. And the only reason he’s thinking about living here again is to make a future run for Senate. Face it, had Ben Nelson not stepped down, the chances are nil that Kerrey would have ever claimed a Nebraska residence ever again.

Anonymostly,
Nice comment, until the very last line.
Thus, I have DELETED your final line and left the rest.
This is not something I plan on doing much of, so in the future I’ll just delete the whole thing.
-Ed.

car·pet·bag·ger/ˈkärpitˌbagər/
Noun:
A political candidate who seeks election in an area where they have no local connections.
True of Fortenberry when he first ran for office.
Not true of Kerrey if he runs for the Senate.

Anonymostly, pick up a dictionary. You might learn what words actually mean.

“The Fort” moved to Nebraska – directly after picking up a “Masters” in Theology at Steubenville University – for the express purpose of becoming a U.S. Congressman. He moved here to capture soon-to-be-outgoing former Rep. Doug Bereuter’s seat who talked in D.C. about leaving long before he actually did.

The mere passage of time does not diminish 4/10Berry’s raison d’etre for moving to Nebraska. Consequently, his move from D.C. to Lincoln fits the exact definition of a Carpetbagger.

Why get a Master’s in Theology and then become a Trucking “Executive.” This does not compute. Big time. Plus, you have to examine who “The Fort” was influenced by in Washington, D.C. as the national Republicans were seeking to undo “organic” state Congressional races.

Nonetheless, “The Fort’s” a Fluke in the First and he knows it. That’s why he won’t ever leave the House on his own volition.

Anonymous at 43, well, what can I say. You have managed to cherry pick a definition of carpet bagger that suits your position. Congratulations. However, in a previous thread somewhere on this blog, I quoted another definition retrieved from the Websters dictionary, which I’m NOT going to take the time to try to find again, and it defines carpet bagger as basically a political opportunist who establishes residence somewhere just for the sake of running for office there.

And Ivy Harper at post 45, get over it already. You lost. Now you just look like a sore loser when you keep on keeping on with this grand conspiracy theory of yours (that you continue to posit on this blog — that’s how I know it’s you.) So, you think Jeff Fortenberry got a Masters in Theology at some college in Ohio for the express purpose of moving to Lincoln in order to eventually run for Congress? So, he gets this job in Lincoln but doesn’t run for Congress until almost 10 years later? And you’d have us believe this was all by design? So, why can’t he just run for Congress in Ohio? Wouldn’t that be easier? Or Baton Rouge?

Maybe he just likes Lincoln, made it his home, and got involved in local politics because it interested him. No, that would be too simple, wouldn’t it?

Anonymostly: The best part about Harper running is that she got some issues out there that no one would have known about had Fortenberry run unopposed. She needs to keep writing. I learn more from her posts than from most traditional articles, investigative team of ONE that she is.

To do as well as she did in NEBRASKA was amazing. Now she’s got a following. She knows how to do research, and she keeps doing it. It has nothing to do with sportsmanship. It has to do with keeping the facts before the voters because the media just gives us air-brushed “might-as-well-be-ads” for the politicians they anoint.